The most dangerous deceptions in human history rarely begin with a battle cry of malice. They begin with a cry for justice.

In this week’s Parasha, Korach leads a rebellion against Moses and Aaron using rhetoric that sounds remarkably modern, deeply democratic, and undeniably empathetic. He stands before the leaders of Israel and proclaims: “For the entire congregation is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you lift yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Numbers 16:3)

This is a smokescreen of righteousness. Korach is the first example of the weaponisation of empathy so commonly spread nowadays.

On the surface, Korach is championing the human rights. He sounds like a populist hero fighting a rigid hierarchy, advocating for the spiritual dignity of every single Israelite.

Midrash Tanchuma (Korach 4) pulls back the curtain on this performance, explaining exactly how Korach weaponised this empathy to stir up genuine communal pain. The Midrash describes Korach going from tent to tent, weaponising the plight of a poor widow. He tells the people how Moses and Aaron demanded T’rumah (the priestly tithe), then the Ma’aser (tithe for the Levite), and finally the wool of her lamb, leaving her utterly destitute. Korach wept for her. He used her real, agonising poverty as a rhetorical prop to prove that the system was broken and that Moses was a tyrant.

This empathy, however, was a genuine. The Talmud, Sanhedrin 110a reveals Korach’s true psychological pathology, highlighting that he was blinded entirely by his own envy of Elzaphan ben Uzziel, who had been appointed leader of the Kohathite clan over him.

Korach did not actually care about the widow’s single lamb. He cared about his own lost title. He exploited the language of equality to mask his own desperate need for personal supremacy. This is a heartbreaking, recurring tragedy: our vulnerability to faux-altruism, and the ease with which genuine human suffering can be converted into political capital for the ego.

The danger of this manipulation is that it corrupts the very language of holiness. When empathy is weaponised, words lose their meaning, and cynicism takes root. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Z“L masterfully captured this exact dynamic. He wrote: “Korach was the first populist… he claimed to be speaking for the people when he was actually seeking power for himself. When leadership is challenged not in the name of truth, but through the weaponisation of grievance, as the Midrash shows with the widow’s lamb, and the Talmud traces to raw envy, the social fabric dissolves. True empathy lifts the victim up; weaponised empathy uses the victim to pull the leader down.”

Moses’s reaction is falling on his face. He recognises that you cannot argue logically with a grievance that is fundamentally insincere.

To confront the Korachs of our world, and the Korach within ourselves, we must learn to distinguish between authentic compassion and a manufactured grievance.

True holiness does not require tearing someone else down to prove that we are holy.